Criminal law. Plea Bargaining Education Essay Paper

PLEA BARGAINING
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The role of the criminal justice system is to serve justice. There are many ways of administering justice and some are controversial. One of the controversial criminal justice processes is plea bargaining and it has sparked heated debates with many people calling for its abolishment.
How Plea Bargaining affects Stakeholders
Judges are inclined to support plea bargaining. First, because they are administrators of justice, they believe that the parties involved have arrived at a mutual agreement in which they both feel that justice has been served. Therefore, as administrators of justice, judges are inclined to support the system since it achieves the same goals they pursue in their line of work. Secondly, when parties enter a plea bargain, they avoid the lengthy process of going to trial, which helps lessen the burden on the courts. Therefore, judges also support a plea bargain since it helps reduce their workload.
Prosecutors tend to float plea bargains to their suspects because of several reasons. First, for any suspect who agrees to a plea bargain, it saves them the tedious work of proving that they are guilty if the case went to trial. Therefore, plea bargain helps prosecutors to avoid the lengthy court processes and fast track their convictions. Secondly, prosecutors use plea bargaining to help them to nail bigger suspects. For example, prosecutors can use plea bargaining to compel a defendant to give information and or testify against a criminal kingpin. Thirdly, prosecutors understand that there is always the likelihood that they can lose a case if it goes to trial, especially if the suspect can hire top-shelf attorneys. Therefore, they choose to float plea bargains to avoid following the lengthy criminal justice process and still fail in nailing a conviction. However, in the case of using plea bargaining to help build another case, the information provided by the defendant is always questionable.
For the defendants, they may choose plea bargaining, especially if it gives them lighter sentences for the crimes they have been charged for. Most defendants evaluate the sentences they may get if the case goes to trial against the offer made by the prosecutors. Additionally, defendants tend to evaluate the long-term effect of their conviction and or plea bargain. For example, a licensed professional may choose to enter a plea bargain and plead guilty to a misdemeanor to retain his/her professional license ...